About us

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for welfare, pensions and child maintenance policy. As the UK’s biggest public service department it administers the State Pension and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to around 20 million claimants and customers.

DWP’s aim is to improve people’s day to day lives and help them build financial resilience and a more secure and prosperous future.

Responsibilities

We are responsible for:

  • helping people to move into work and supporting those already in work to progress, with the aim of increasing overall workforce participation
  • helping people to plan and save for later life, while providing a safety net for those who need it now
  • providing effective, efficient, and innovative services to the millions of claimants who rely on us every day, including the most vulnerable in society
  • improving experience of our services while maximising value for money for the taxpayer

Priorities

Our priorities for April 2023 to March 2025 are to:

  1. maximise employment, reduce economic inactivity and support the progression of those in work
  2. provide financial support to people who are entitled to it
  3. enable disabled people and people with health conditions to start, stay and succeed in work, and get financial support
  4. support financial resilience in later life

Read the DWP annual report and accounts 2022 to 2023 to find out more about how we are delivering against our objectives.

Who we are

We provide our services in a number of ways, for example through Jobcentre Plus, The Pension Service, the Child Maintenance Service and partner organisations.

Read about our service standards in our customer charter.

Carers and disability benefits

We deal with carers and disability benefits including:

Jobcentre Plus

Jobcentre Plus helps people move from benefits into work and helps employers advertise jobs. It also deals with benefits for people who are unemployed or unable to work because of a health condition or disability.

Contact Jobcentre Plus

The Pension Service

The Pension Service provides pensions, benefits and retirement information for current and future pensioners in the UK and abroad. This includes:

Contact The Pension Service

Child Support Agency and Child Maintenance Service

Child maintenance is financial support that helps towards a child’s everyday living costs when the parents have separated. For people who can’t make their own family-based arrangements, the Child Support Agency and Child Maintenance Service:

  • calculate how much maintenance the paying parent should pay to the receiving parent
  • collect the maintenance payments, if necessary

Child Maintenance

Arm’s-length bodies

Our arm’s-length bodies play an important role in delivery of our services. The bodies support our objectives to deliver high quality services for taxpayers, and to deliver improved and efficient services, through regulation, guidance, consumer protection, complaints handling, research, and investigation.

Corporate information

Access our information

Jobs and contracts

Read about the types of information we routinely publish in our Publication scheme. Find out about our commitment to Welsh language scheme. Our Personal information charter explains how we treat your personal information. Read our policy on Social media use.

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